The Malik Report

The Detroit Red Wings' 3-2 OT win to the Carolina Hurricanes was initially case of a team making too many mistakes and playing just "too cute" to get the job done on bad ice with bad bounces and...Scatterbrained efforts by the Wings' secondary and tertiary scorers not named Alfredsson, Andersson or Miller.

I'd argue that Jimmy Howard was partially at fault for both goals against--despite the fact that Brendan Smith and Kyle Quincey illustrated exactly how defensemen should NOT approach a 3-on-2, with Smith taking himself out of the play and Quincey waving at the puck that Radek Dvorak shoveled over Howard, Howard should NOT have committed to the poke check that allowed Dvorak to flick the puck over his shoulder...

And in the second period, when the Wings were the victim of a double-deflection on the PK, with a boucing puck going off of both Zetterberg and DeKeyser, right to Nathan Gerbe, Howard left his five hole open, and Gerbe was able to flutter the puck through the five-hole...

The Wings were down 2-0 with 1:49 left in the 2nd, and you kind of had the feeling that it was over.

But Howard was stellar otherwise as the Hurricanes out-chanced the WIngs and out-sustained puck possession, with Detroit seemingly too content to trade rushes, to skate on the outside of battles for the puck, poking their stick in instead of gaining body position, and simply looking like they were playing down to the level of their opponent...

And while Justin Abdelkader scored an absolutely gorgeous goal 42 seconds into the 3rd, taking advantage of a rare Wings bounce off of Justin Falk's stick via a pass from Henrik Zetterberg and burying the puck between Cam Ward's legs...

The Wings whiffed on their power play from the 3-5 minute mark, and aside from the diagonal pass that led to the Abdelkader zone, the Wings played right into the hands of a trap-dump-and-not-chase team, trying to make cute plays and over-passing and over-waiting to shoot...

The fact that the Grand Rapids Griffins defeated Rochester 8-1 while Mikael Samuelsson hamstrung the second power play unit and the best players on the third and fourth line were Miller and Andersson as well as the facts that the non-Kronwall-and-Ericsson defenders struggled did not speak well of the Wings' personnel....

But while I was writing that paragraph, after the Wings had blown an offensive zone draw with Howard pulled, Alfredsson, Datsyuk and Zetterberg unleashed a flurry of shots and eventually, with Johan Franzen in front and Sekera dropping to his knees to block the first backhand, Zetterberg was able to plow a high, hard shot past Ward to salvage a point.

All of a sudden, 17 seconds away from a loss, the Wings had their point. The shots in the 3rd were 16-11 Detroit, and OT began with the Wings taking a thoroughly mediocre effort and turning it into SOMEthing while the Bruins waited for Detroit to fly from Raleigh to Massachusetts...

The Wings traded wild stabbing chances, and finally, Franzen and Kronwall chose to pull off a dangerous dangerous pinch, with Franzen sweeping hte puck over to Kronwall off al ine change, and Franzen stabbed at it, kicked it and as Weiss lurked in the slot, he plowed the puck off of Ward and gave the Wings a win, 3:13--ha ha--in to OT against Peter Karmanos' team and Weiss's alma mater's owner.

In terms of "deserving" the game, the Red Wings earned jack and shit. But it ain't about who deserves anything. It's about taking what you can get and stealing the rest.

*#$%@& 'em. It was an ugly, mucky, grindy, trap-happy mess of a game. The Wings were mostly thoroughly mediocre, but Howard did indeed keep the Wings in it, and despite continued crappy special teams performances (no PPG's and 1 PPG against), the Wings did what they can do to us all year long: frustrate the hell out of us for 55 minutes, and then go and steal two points.

"We wanted to stay patient...Z took over in the third & we were lucky enough to get it in overtime" - Stephen Weiss pic.twitter.com/bLE6HGr69z

Missed shots 15-15 (total attempts 76-55, with the Wings shooting 38 shots AT Cam Ward and another 38 wide or into Canes players);

Hits 26-20 Carolina;

Giveaways 10-6 Detroit;

Takeaways 12-8 Carolina.

Individual stats, TMR style:

Faceoffs: Datsyuk went 10-and-7 (59%); Weiss went 4-and-8 (33%); Andersson went 4-and-7 (36%); Emmerton went 5-and-1 (83%); Samuelsson lost his only faceoffs.

Shots: Zetterberg led the Wings with 10 shots and he had 6 more attempts; Alfredsson had 5 shots; Abdelkader and Datsyuk had 4; Franzen had 3; Kindl, Emmerton and Weiss had 2; Smith, Andersson Quincey, Bertuzzi, Kronwall and DeKeyser had 1.

Comments

To make the last sentence a little more positive, I’d say “frustrate us for 55 minutes and then stun us in the last 5”.

Boy, I really don’t want to watch another season of them trying to look like the puck possession teams of years gone by, and screwing up constantly. It’s early, but I feel like I saw a lot of the same things I saw last season.

Needlessly long, forced passes. They don’t seem to be a 5 man unit yet. And last year, I felt like I was seeing defensemen left with no support a lot, as forwards stationed themselves on the boards or something, waiting to see if the Dman with pressure on him could get the pass off…

Whatever, I’ll just wait and see…the ending was good enough for me right now.

here here. great win. I totally hear you, though it’s very early still. the most promising thing from this game to me was just how damn dangerous Alfie was. if his body holds up, what an unexpected boost to our lineup.

With Sammy glued to the bench the last period, I’d like to say it means we see Tatar tomorrow night. We could have used him out there the last period.

I say that second one was all Quincey? He stands there in the corner and watches a carolina player move away from him into the circle and waits. When the puck comes to a player he left behind him at the side of the net, Howard is tracking the puck. He CANNOT leave the puck alone to watch the guy standing at the edge of his crease. That goal was mostly on the dufus not paying any attention to the dude he left behind him at the corner of the net. It’s the same thing they did a lot last year when they got scored on during a PK. Someone let an opponent camp at the side of the net and an easy goal was had.

And re: Howard’s puck handling skills.
STAY IN THE DAMN NET. He’s terrible. He almost always mishandles the puck and passes it to an opponent. I wish he would stop thinking he knows what the hell he is doing when he leaves his net. The only time he should be allowed out of the crease is when they are on a PP and the other team is changing so he can pass the puck up, and when he’s skating off for the extra man. Other than that, he needs to be tied to the net to make sure he doesn’t go on an ill fated voyage.
Like last game.

I may or may not write a recap or overnight report. I’m struggling mightily to deal with a double-whammy of difficult news and I am in pain. Pain like, “I barely kept my shit together through last night’s game and tonight’s game was harder pain.” Very bad news. And I cannot share what’s going on, all I can say is that the fact that I’m producing any content is something that baffles me. I shouldn’t be functioning at all.

The important thing is the huge swing in fantasy points I got with Datsyuk, Kronwall, Weiss and Howard on my team. That game was leading to me netting -2 pts and suddenly it was +11. You live by the Wings, you die by the Wings.

Quincey screwed up his coverage by ranging too far up the ice, but the play started on a Danny DeKeyser turnover and the puck got to Gerbe off a deflection off DK’s skate from the point shot that resulted from that turnover.

The herky-jerky passing was absolutely infuriating in this game. I want to chalk it up to the ice in Carolina being garbage, but that’s a crap excuse when the team’s already played 40 minutes on the same surface and is still trying 40-foot East-West passes with very little chance of connecting and it’s unacceptable when a finesse touch never gets to its recipient after the players had plenty of time to know that the Carolina ice would kill finesse touches.

To their credit, Carolina’s forecheck and backcheck skated aggressively in the lanes of the “simple play” because they know their own ice and what you can/cannot do on it when the weather that day is balmy.

Alex Semin had an interesting game. It took about 25 minutes for me to go “Oh yeah I forgot he got $7M a year, haha” to “Oh that’s why.” But for the grace of a few inches, Semin could have had two goals last night.

I’d argue that Jimmy Howard was partially at fault for both goals against—despite the fact that Brendan Smith and Kyle Quincey illustrated exactly how defensemen should NOT approach a 3-on-2, with Smith taking himself out of the play and Quincey waving at the puck that Radek Dvorak shoveled over Howard, Howard should NOT have committed to the poke check that allowed Dvorak to flick the puck over his shoulder…

About The Malik Report

The Malik Report is a destination for all things Red Wings-related. I offer biased, perhaps unprofessional-at-times and verbose coverage of my favorite team, their prospects and developmental affiliates. I've joined the Kukla's Korner family with five years of blogging under my belt, and I hope you'll find almost everything you need to follow your Red Wings at a place where all opinions are created equal and we're all friends, talking about hockey and the team we love to follow.